The present invention relates generally to the field of digital content for the delivery of video, audio, and multi-media content, and more particularly to innovations for representing and managing digital content.
Current methods for representing and managing digital content, such as digital video content, stem from early techniques of converting linear tape and film content into digitally storable data. For example, a linear, contiguous stream of captured images may be converted to a digital representation of the images and then stored in a contiguous file (e.g., a video file) including a series of encoded blocks of data. To playback such a file (e.g., a video file), a rendering device reads the one or more files of the video file starting at the first encoded block of data, renders the data into an image, and then repeats the process until all of the data for the video has been read and rendered. Thus, playback may be an essentially linear process.
However, a contiguous video file may present challenges relating to video processing and editing, transport, and playback. For example, while only a portion of a video file may be edited, the entire video file is retranscoded after editing, which may increase and time and cost of editing the video file. Moreover, the editing process may involve either altering the original video data or creating one or more alternate versions of the video, which may increase the storage required. Further, because the video file is a contiguous data stream, the entire video file may be given to a post production/editing facility. Thus, restricting access to portions of the video file may be difficult or impossible.
Additionally, a contiguous video file may provide challenges in digital viewing systems configured to show content synchronized with coordinated content shown on one or more viewing devices. In particular, the playback devices may not be contextually aware of the video being rendered. That is, because the playback device renders the content in an essentially linear process, the content may be rendered without any contextual information. While some techniques have been utilized to attempt to synchronize coordinated content shown on a second device with content shown on a first device, these techniques oftentimes rely on time metrics that may become corrupted or uninterpretable in some situations due to skipped, lost, dropped, replayed, paused, or edited portions of the video stream.
It may therefore be desirable to develop a new method for representing digital content that does not treat digital video as contiguous blocks of data to be read and rendered. Additionally, there is a need for a system configured to synchronize content with coordinated content using contextual information of the video data.